Wagons Hitched to Star Wars: NATO allies consider participating

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Star Wars? Just another lame-brained American idea that probably won't work. If it does work, it might be dangerous to Western Europe. And either way, it is likely to disrupt arms-control negotiations with the Soviets. All the same, we can't afford to stay out of it.

Contradictory though that sounds, it is a fair summation of European reaction to President Reagan's suggestion, repeated at this month's Bonn economic summit, that U.S. allies join the $26 billion research program to develop a space-based defense against Soviet missiles. Britain and Italy have both indicated a desire to help out; West Germany will send a mission to Washington to explore what role it could play in the Strategic Defense Initiative, as Star Wars is formally named. Even French President Francois Mitterrand, while loudly refusing to have anything to do with SDI on a government level, has said he would not prevent French companies from signing Star Wars research contracts.

This interest is more than a bit paradoxical. Europeans remain as dubious as ever that an effective missile defense can be built at all, and fear that it would endanger rather than protect them if it could be. The reasoning: the system could zap Soviet missiles headed for the U.S. but not those aimed at Western Europe, because flight times to targets there are so short. In addition, if the U.S. had a defensive shell, it might be less likely to go on | viewing its security and that of Western Europe as inextricably linked. Europe's safety can be guaranteed only by a continued U.S. threat to retaliate against any Soviet attack; hence, a potential American shift from a strategy of deterrence to one of defense is frightening. Another fear is that the U.S. will spurn any Soviet offer to scrap significant numbers of missiles in the talks now under way in Geneva if the Soviets continue to insist that a halt to Star Wars research be included in any arms-control package. Such an impasse, warns one British official, could trigger "NATO's worst postwar crisis."

But whether or not the Star Wars program leads to a working missile defense, it may produce scientific breakthroughs that will have important civilian applications. European allies fear that if they do not share in those discoveries, they could be left in a technological backwater. They hope too that if they become partners in the research, they will gain a voice in Washington's decisions on whether to deploy a Star Wars defense and how to treat SDI in negotiations with the Soviets. Says Horst Teltschik, senior security adviser to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl: "Maybe in joining SDI we can enhance our own influence."

Just what role Washington wants the Europeans to play, however, is not at all clear. "Subcontractors!" exclaimed Mitterrand (in English) after listening to Reagan's pitch at the Bonn summit. "That was the word I heard. It confirmed my intuitions." Other government leaders insist that their countries want to be treated as full partners who will be kept apprised of major research developments and get to share in the technology. But a Pentagon briefing last week left officials of the British Defense Ministry with the impression that the U.K. would be . . . well, a subcontractor.